1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the management of vehicle parking systems and in particular to such systems using remote management techniques for enhancing management efficiency and to provide solutions to the parking system that could not otherwise be managed by (1) sensing, collecting, recording and displaying data regarding all aspects of the environment pertaining to the parking system, (2) analyzing the data collected to create actionable outputs responsive to the needs of the public and the management of the parking system; (3) communicating with the various parking system components; and (4) receiving feedback to perform requested operations for the parking system.
2. Related Art
Parking Systems
Although many of the components their respective functions, such as electronic parking meters, collector nodes, nodes, gateways cellular modems, web portals, the internet, wireless communication, computer processing unit (CPU) associated with vehicle parking systems are known, there does not exist interactive system which, in near real time, monitors existing parking meters as to all facets of their existence and operation (including maintenance and length of stay) and transmits, analyzes, displays and makes available for all users the information so obtained and produced.
Parking Management
The management of an entity's available parking is a challenge to those tasked with administration of that entity. Parking is a resource that has both a diverse user group and a high level of economic and environmental impact. The available supply of parking is often much smaller than the demand for it, but is also continually changing. This results in shortages that need to be fairly distributed. Price fluctuations to meet changes in demand are also impossible to institute because of lack of timely knowledge as to the changes.
Price is not the only means by which people have tried to manage parking. They have also sought to ration parking through the use of time limits for use of the parking spaces. However, the dispersed nature of parking spaces makes monitoring of the spaces by traditional methods ineffective.
Tools exist currently to aide in the management of parking resources. The deployment of parking meters greatly enhances the ability to collect monies and monitor the use of parking spaces. However, these meters also create a further management issue as these pieces of equipment require regular preventative maintenance as well as occasional repair. Such actions must be performed by skilled personnel. This places an additional burden on the administrative body to monitor not only the spaces, but the dispersed equipment, parts and personnel and to determine when a particular meter is out of order.
All of this monitoring and management is the challenge of parking administrators. It generally requires all or almost all of the manager's time simply to keep the operation running leaving little time to devote to actual balancing of use and availability of parking spaces to the general public. In this regard, the current approaches to parking management fail to perform the function they were designed to achieve.
Parking Space as an Asset
Due to a limited supply of space and a high degree of demand for parking, parking spaces have been delineated for the purpose of distributing the asset fairly. In addition to partition of the assets, time-sharing or rationing occurs in towns where time limits are imposed for the use of the asset. This meant the need to establish and enforce the rules and the commitment of human resources to the management of the asset and its use. This represented a new asset of the community.
The introduction of the parking meter allowed for time-sharing of parking spaces to be timed automatically and increased the efficiency of the human resources committed to parking management. It also allowed for the collection of parking fees without requiring the continuous presence of a fee collector. While this new asset improved efficiency in the management of a limited resource, it has significant collateral requirements and effects. These include the need to repair meters, to enforce parking regulations and to collect revenues. To maximize the efficiency of the parking plant from all points of view, one must also be able to analyze the public's use of the space (including identification of available space, average time of occupancy) identify meters in need of repair, coin boxes in need of collection, meters out of service and parking spaces occupied in violation of regulations. All of this information, ideally, should be available to parking management and to all who use the plant for whatever purpose (e.g. customer or maintenance personnel) in near real time. To date, no system has been developed which does this. While technology (a timer and coin discriminator) allows the system of dispersed assets to operate in an understandable way for all of its users and also allows for more effective management of a limited resource, it also requires that inoperable meters be repaired and that monies be collected. The additional personnel requirements to address these needs often require a layer of management personnel to support their operations.
Diverse User Groups
The users of the information able to be developed as to parking spaces and the particular pieces of information of use of them are extraordinarily diverse. They include the public—the people wishing to make use of the space who want to know availability, location, proximity and terms of what is, in economic reality, a short term lease including permitted length of stay and changes; the business community who want to know patterns of usage from the point of view of maximizing turnover of prospective customer base; the enforcement personnel—the people charged with enforcing the regulation adopted as to the space; the maintenance personnel—tasked with ensuring the operability of the physical assets; the collection crews—responsible for actually collecting the revenues from the parking plant on a schedule which ensures no revenues are lost from collection bins being filled to capacity; management—charged with ultimate responsibility for all of the foregoing as well as maximization of revenues consistent with addressing the underlying concern of the public to best allocate a limited resource for the best good of the group.
Not only are the demands of these various groups best served if they have up-to-the-minute information as to the parking plant, there are other uses they and others may make of such information which are not directly parking related, e.g. better information as to collection cycles may permit more efficient money management by a municipal treasurer; knowledge of meters out of order may result in more effective supply chain management of inventory.